


stars are stars, no matter where you see them from

by popcornlogic



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 07:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10328696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popcornlogic/pseuds/popcornlogic
Summary: Jillian and Scott Ryder are about to leave for a strange new galaxy, but they have time for one last conversation before they go under.





	

Scott was nervous.

Oh, he was saying he was fine, of course, but Jillian knew her brother well enough to know when he was full of shit. Not that it was hard in this case; he couldn’t stop moving.

She was sitting on an examination table, her sleeve still rolled up from the one last blood test the doctors insisted on running on her, but Scott was pacing back and forth, back and forth, only stopping to crank out a dozen push-ups or to bounce up and down on his heels.

“God, can you stop?” Jillian said finally. “You’re freaking me out.”

Scott laughed like he always did when he was trying to act casual – Jillian had heard that same laugh before every date he had every gone on, before every test they had ever taken – but he still didn’t stop moving. He just started moving slower. “What, are you getting nervous, Jill?” he asked as he started shadow-boxing with the window that looked out over the Mass Relay the ship was orbiting. “Lost your nerve?” 

“I haven’t lost _anything,_ ” Jillian replied. “I’m not the one beating up glass.” That stopped him and he looked sheepish. “Just … relax. We’ll be fine.”

“I know _that,_ ” Scott said. He let a breath escape his mouth in a low hiss and quickly spun around on his heel. His boots squeaked and Jillian smirked at that. Scott looked at her and the confident face he was always so good at putting on broke for a moment. “Okay, this is just between you and me, right?”

“And my diary, of course,” Jillian grinned at her brother and he smiled back.

“And your diary, yeah.” Scott leaned against the wall and crossed his arms across his stomach. “You know I like to feel … in control. I like to know things. But now, now we’re going into the unknown, right? Into the frontier. And it’s exciting and all. I mean, it’s like the Wild West -"

“- times a million, yeah.”

“But we could wind up the damn intergalactic Donner Party, Jill.” He ran both hands through his hair, messing that perfect part of his for just a moment before he started fixing it. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m willing to die and all – that’s not what I’m worried about. I just … don’t want it to be a waste.”

“It won’t be,” Jillian said insistently and she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “Look at the people who’ll be with us. The best and brightest, right?”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

“That’s the _truth_. And we’ll have dad, and we’ll have each other.” Jillian grinned again at her brother. “And, come one, nothing stands a chance when we’re together. Right?”

Scott nodded, but Jillian didn’t let up. She got up and straightened her ponytail. “I’m going to need you to say right, Scotty. Come on …”

“You’re right, Jill,” he said, laughing.

“About what? What am I right about?”

“About us being unbeatable.”

“ _Fucking_ unbeatable -”

“Fucking unbeatable!”

They laughed together like they used to in college whenever one of them would need encouragement about a test or a sports game, and for a moment it didn’t seem all that much like they were on the edge of jumping off a cliff, even though Jillian could feel that same rock weighing down her stomach that she knew Scott was feeling too. They looked each other in the eyes, the ones that had mirror flecks of green in their brown, and like they had so many other times in their lives that had a full conversation just through a change in their pupils.

Scott breathed and shook his head, and he squeezed Jillian’s shoulders as she pulled him into a tight hug, and they stayed there for a minute.

Finally, Scott pulled back and ruffled Jillian’s hair. “Thanks, sis,” he said, quietly. “Alright, back to professional Scott. Unflappable Scott.”

“Iceman Scotty,” Jillian said, saying the first thing she could think of.

“Do people call me that?”

“They do now.” Jillian rolled down her sleeves and fixed her ponytail again. “Are you really good now?”

Scott thought about it. “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “Guess I just needed to get that all off my chest.”

“You said all your goodbyes, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Even to Carley?” Carley was Scott’s longtime on-again, off-again girlfriend, but she wasn’t coming to Andromeda. Scott originally wasn’t going to say bye to her before Jillian talked him into it.

“Even to her.” Scott glanced over his shoulder out at the stars. “It’s funny. That was actually the best break-up we’ve had in years.”

“Maybe it was the closure of it all? I mean, there’s no going back now.”

“Maybe,” Scott said. “I don’t know. But she took it well. Didn’t even cry or anything.”

“Well, not in front of you, she didn’t.”

That seemed to hit Scott for the first time as a possibility. “Yeah,” he said simply. There was silence between them for a moment, and they could hear the engine of the ship running softly in the background. “What about you? Who was that, uh, that _person_ you were seeing?”

“You mean Livia?” Scott squinted at the name, and Jillian laughed at his discomfort. He never liked the mental image of her dating an alien, even an asari– he had literally spit his drink out when she had first told him. “She took it well. I mean, we were never serious, but she still took it well.”

“Good. That’s … good.” He was still looking out at the stars. Jillian leaned next to him and looked out too. “Drink it in,” he said, looking over at her. “Last time we’ll ever see these stars.”

“Stars are stars, Scott. Doesn’t matter where you are, they pretty much look the same.”

“Hm,” he said, and he looked like he was going to say more, but just then a doctor wearing the clean white outfits they all were wearing came in then. “Jillian?” he asked, looking down at his tablet and then up. “Oh, sorry if I’m disturbing …”

Jillian looked at Scott and then at the doctor. “Oh, you’re not,” she said. “Is it my turn to go under?”

“It is,” the doctor said. He looked over at Scott. “I assume you’re Scott?”

“Yep.”

“Dr. Padilla will be right in for you,” he said, and returned his gaze to Jillian. “If you’ll follow me …”

Jillian looked at him, and then hugged Scott again, tightly. “See you in a few hundred years,” she said, walking backwards towards the door.

Scott laughed and turned away from the window. “Don’t wake up without me, okay?”                                   

Jillian laughed too and said as she turned away, “I wouldn't dream of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work on AO3 so ... thanks for reading! I might continue this as I play Andromeda if I'm inspired and people like it.


End file.
